


A Giant Horse (Crapping on the World)

by Baby_Fangirl



Category: Bird Box (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 06:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17740940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baby_Fangirl/pseuds/Baby_Fangirl
Summary: On the supply run, Malorie comes across something that triggers her fondest memory of her and her sister.Small drabble.





	A Giant Horse (Crapping on the World)

Malorie pushed the cart down another aisle, this one filled with magazines and other boredom breakers. She was barely looking at the items hanging in perfect condition off the hooks and shelves. Everything was so perfectly preserved, almost as if the world wasn’t ending outside of those front doors.

The front wheel was squeaking precariously, and the brunette tried not to grin at the catchy rhythm that it was making as she ambled around the store, knocking random, yet essential items into the trolley. She could hear Douglas in another part of the shop yelling loudly about his alcoholic victories and tried to remember the last time she’d had something strong to drink… she’d been mostly good on the drink for the baby.

Mal let her mahogany brown gaze wander the shelves before she stopped in her tracks, her eyes locked on a small painting set, with a navy-blue tin and perfectly untouched paints… just like the one her sister had bought her for her birthday...

* * *

 

“Happy Birthday, dear dum-dum… happy birthday to you!” Jessica finished singing with an exaggeratedly elongated note that was still perfect, despite the fact that the girl was half sprawled across her bed, her head hanging off the edge as her hair reached the ground and she laughed at the upside-down image of her sister.

 A rather large, impish grin was blossoming upon her lips as Malorie barely acknowledged her, staring up at the beams that ran across the ceiling, a tired smile only just caressing her features.

“You’re an idiot,” Mal fondly responded, not even giving her sister the satisfaction of glancing over at her goofy position.

Despite the fact that, as of that very day, both girls were now eighteen, they were still more than happy to share the same room that expanded the length of the whole house. Jessica and Malorie had never considered separating into their own rooms, but had only migrated further across the floor until both beds were at polar opposites.

When they were cooped together like this, it was easier to see just how similar and different both teenagers were.

Jessica’s side of the room was mostly tidy, aside from the walls that was still majorly littered with posters she’d ripped from magazines at thirteen; or with photographs of frozen memories, her first horse riding lesson, picnics with Malorie; she had medals hung here and there by dusty ribbons, and postcards addressed to her with stallions or Shetland ponies gracing the front of the card. Nobody had ever written on them, but they’d made a point to buy them for her whenever they’d found one on their holidays.

In the very centre of the wall was the most hideous sight.

Malorie had painted her sister a picture of a horse when they were both just innocent (and talentless) children, but now, ten years later, Mal despised looking at it, day after day. The legs were stupidly short, and the neck was freakishly long, looking more like a corgi giraffe hybrid than a noble steed.

She had offered, even begged to redraw the old artwork; she was better with a brush now. She could paint hoses galloping, and trotting, and leaping over hurdles, But Jessica loved the old masterpiece. She had framed it with glitter-glue and flower stickers and pinned it to her wall, where it had stayed (unfortunately) for a decade.

Malorie’s side of the room was less… eventful. Her shelves were crammed with books and albums. She had long since lost her desk under an avalanche of pots and stencils and brushes. Half painted canvases trailed from her corner of the room, slowly stalking out towards the window, waiting in earnest to be finished. But the brunette wasn’t very good at finishing what she’d started. After all, her folded up clothes had started to resemble the leaning tower of Pisa on the chair from where she had started on putting them away.

 

The birthday girl blinked up at the roof, lost in thought until she was awoken from her trance by something hard smacking her in the face.

“Oh my God, did that hit you?  I’m sorry!” Jessica quickly rushed as Malorie sat up, groaning in quiet annoyance as the assaulting object fell into her lap, covered in wrapping paper.

“No, Jess, it didn’t hit me, it sailed right through my skull because I’m a poltergeist, now what the fuck is this?” Mal whispered, sarcasm filtering into her voice like infused tea. She’d tried her hardest to be stern at the fact she was attacked by a flying thingy-ma-bob; but it was hard to tie back the quaver of amusement.

“It’s your birthday present dum-dum. Honestly, why people keep saying you’re intelligent, I will never understand?” The elder girl teased, sitting up with a nauseating rush to her head from being upside-down for too long, a silent groan dangling from her parted lips.

Malorie mimicked her sisters words in a high pitched squeaky voice, before trailing into a half-hearted quite chuckle, timid fingertips tracing over the wrapping, as if she was afraid it would explode in her hands. Jessica had the potential to be playfully cruel with her, but putting her life in danger wasn’t her style... And finally admitting that the present wasn’t about to detonate, Mal opened her gift.

The darker haired sister beamed softly at the expensive painting set that landed in her lap, she had put these oil paints on her Christmas wish list for years. “Oh, Jessica, these- these are amazing,” the younger Hayes sibling glanced across with such an appreciation glittering in her fond gaze, a sweet smile tugging on cold lips. “thank you,”

Jessica, finally orientated back in the world of right-way-up, bounced off her bed and hurdled onto Malorie's in no more than three ecstatic bounces. “You like? Happy birthday dum-dum,” she pulled her younger sister back down to lay with Malorie's head snuggling into her arm. She’d always been so independent and self-assure, but Jess had always seen through her solo façade and had always been there.  

“This has been the best birthday ever,” Malorie grins up at the wooden beam stretching across the ceiling again, a content settling upon her chest, comforted by the eldest Hayes presence, at some point, Jess had begun to stroke through her dark mahogany tresses and Mal could fall asleep at any given moment, still clutching her oil paints. Jessica let loose a soft ‘ _hmm'_ prompting her sister to continue.

“I mean it. Cake. Watching movies with you and mom. Pizza. Jack and coke, more cake. Chilling with the best sister in the world. More movies... Cake,” Malorie reeled off in an amused sort of time that made Jessica laugh warmly, like rich velvet.

“I had fun too, although your film choices suck. You’re eighteen now, watch a scary movie!”

“We _did_ watch a scary movie,” Mal concluded pointedly, lazily glancing up toward her sister, who was having none of her argument.

Jessica scoffed in what only could be described as the most ludicrous scoff that the younger girl had ever heard. “Little shop of horrors is not a scary movie. It’s 1980s production, the animatronics are cheap. And it is also the most ridiculous way the world could ever possibly end. Death by plants.” Malorie shifted slightly so that she was staring up towards her sister.

“Do you think the world _could_ end that way, by plant?” the darker haired girl inquired with a genuine curiosity lacing her question.

“Alien foliage takes over the world? No, I think the world is going to end with zombies, it’s much more believable,” Jessica entertained her sisters inquisitive mumbles.

“Zombies?” she echoed.

The older girl nodded, sitting up further, watching Mallory with an amused grin, “Yeah, who knows what viruses the government is cooking up? I bet they test a virus on a human death row prisoner and then they kill the doctors and escape and take over the world with their stupidity.”

Mal blinked, a teasing glance of surprise upon her countenance, “Wow. That is actually the most recent thing I think I’ve ever heard you say concluding the end of the human race!”

“What? What do you think I would have said?” Jessica prompted, leaning to playfully shove her sibling.

“I don’t know. Maybe a giant, _giant_ horse galloping on the earth, one hoof alone crushing all of America,” Malorie teased her further earning a short chuckle from the other, before Jess’s face fell serious once again.

“That poor horse, it must get so lonely being so big by himself.” She sympathised sadly, as if genuinely imagining the end of mankind, and pitying its destroyer.

Mal gave an exaggerated eye roll, “The whole world is in jeopardy and you feel sorry for the _horse_ ,”

“Of course I do. Who’s gonna feed him? Who’s going to clean up the dung?” Jessica stressed, finally letting a small and independent smile tingle on her lips as she met her sisters dark gaze. Mallory struggled to contain the laughter that was rumbling in the very back of her throat.

“His dungs will probably suffocate all of China, Jess,” the counter-argument brushed off of Jessica like a feather off of the empire state building; and Mal knew there was no possible way she could convince her sister that an equine-apocalypse was not a good thing.

“That... that is the way I want to go.” Jess nodded in all seriousness, and Mallory swallowed her laughter, shaking her head impossibly fast.

“Jess, No,” she begged.

“Oh my god. Malorie you should paint this!” the older sister exclaimed in a wild burst of confident excitement, as she grinned brighter than the Cheshire cat from wonderland.

Mal groaned softly, closing her eyes, “Oh my god,”

Jessica beamed, nodding enthusiastically as she continued to pester her little sister, poking her gently in the ribs, causing the brunette to squirm slightly, “Paint me a picture of a giant horse crapping on the world!”

Mal groaned in low protest, pushing her older sister off her bed, finally allowing a rumbling chuckle to sound from her throat, watching the other girl slink  back off to her own bed, “Go to sleep Jessie,” she smiled warmly.

Jessica leant over to turn off the lamp, enveloping the whole room in a comforting darkness, quite content that the world wasn’t going to end by man-eating plants, or horses the size of Mars.

“Night night Dum-Dum. Happy Birthday,” Jessica whispered fondly.

* * *

 

 

Malorie’s slim digits shook slightly as she reached out to take the item from the shelf, her vision clouding, blurring the paint-set, the cart, the floor, until everything was just burning colour, and she brushed her tears away.

She had loved her sister, and Mal wondered if she’d told her that enough. She wanted to, but now it was too late. She wanted to tell Jess that she loved her so damn much…

And all she wanted in that moment, was to for Jessica to be there, smile at her the way she always had, and say _“I know, dum-dum,”._


End file.
